Going Back
by nut-tree
Summary: Luna goes back to her old house and thinks about her mum - one shot, please r r!


**Authors note**: sorry I haven't been posting …at all really- y'know school's getting busy and such and I do have a bit of the next bit of Hermione's birthday but I've hit a bit of a brick wall with it… anyway- here's a bit of Luna for you, I've never written much about her before! And happy Christmas if I don't submit something before that!

The raindrops hung on the dark windowpane like stars in a night sky. Luna pressed her hand against the glass, feeling its coolness and marvelling at how her skin seemed to glow against the black night beyond. The house was very quiet this time at night, but the sadness that now infiltrated the days in the Weasley house was at least forgotten, except perhaps in dreams….

As if on cue, a yell came from somewhere above, quickly followed by the slam of a nearby door and the sound of footsteps. It had happened every night since Luna had been staying at the burrow and so she knew from experience that soon Mrs Weasley would be rousing the entire house to help bring George properly back to reality.

Luna looked at the half lit forms of Hermione and Ginny, still sleeping now, but not for long, and then for a much longer time out at the velvety, peaceful night. She pulled on a jumper over her blue nightie and tiptoed out of the room and down the stairs.

It was still raining slightly, the small drops beading her hair and making the hillside appear slightly out of focus, but Luna liked the rain, even if it did mean she was shivering by the time her feet took her to the ruin that had once been her home.

"Our little pepper pot house" her mum had always called it, and Luna whispered the words sadly to herself as she gazed upon it ; it certainly didn't look like one now. Only a fraction of the curved wall was still standing, with the rest of the building reduced to mere rubble and broken furniture. The garden had once been her parent's pride and joy, but now it was little but a kind of overgrown thicket and a few straggling plants growing up through the gaps in the wreckage.

There had been very little, possession wise, that Luna had missed in the last few months- except perhaps with the exception of her toothbrush and collection of interestingly shaped fungi, but standing there she couldn't help but ache at the loss of the place where it had all happened, of the walls that had seen everything from her birth to the first edition of the quibbler to her mother's funeral, it not being there just felt _wrong_.

The darkness seemed to suddenly become suffocating and she lit her wand with a practised flick, slightly at a loss about what to do now she was here. She twirled the strip of wood absently between her fingers for a while, then stopped suddenly as a glimpse of reflected light winked back at her from under the shadowy mass of her father's broken printing press. She hesitated for half a second before starting to pick her way towards it.

At first she thought it was just a shard from one of the windows, but as she got closer she could tell that the thing that had reflected the light was, in fact, the cracked glass of a very dusty picture frame and one that she knew very well indeed. Heart pounding, she tapped the glass with her wand to repair it, and then rubbed away as much of the grime and plaster dust as she could from it with the sleeve of her nightie, then she took a deep breath and properly looked at the photograph behind it. Her mother laughed up at her, arms tightly wrapped around a younger version of Luna- who looked so safe and so warm and just so, so happy- the usual fog of distance that shrouded her gaze completely gone. She could have almost been any ordinary kid, having a normal, everyday cuddle with her mum, only it was _her_ and nothing about their family had ever been ordinary…

Luna stood there for a long time, smiling through her tears, remembering.

"Luna!"

Luna looked around from where she had been painting the wall over her bed and saw her mother's head sticking through the gap in her floor where the staircase went down into her Dad's office, her hair appeared to be smoking slightly and a grin a mile wide was stretched across her face.

"Sweetheart, you must come at once! I've – I mean we've… oh just come and see, come and see!" she clapped her hands together excitedly for a moment and then disappeared back downstairs.

Luna smiled benignly, removing her artist's smock that her parents had bought her last Christmas to reveal a zigzag, turquoise affair and skipped off down the stairs after her Mum.

Xenophilius, standing next to the sink and supervising the dishes whilst they washed themselves, smiled at her as she arrived in the kitchen- gesturing towards the trapdoor next to the entrance to the parlour.

"She's just down there- it is all rather exciting" his eyes twinkled uncharacteristically and, literally swelling with pride he added "it was my idea to add the dried billywigs.

With these intriguing words ringing in her ears Luna seized the brass handle of the trapdoor and heaved it open so that grey-blueish steam billowed out and filled the kitchen. Laughing slightly, she blindly climbed down the ladder into her mother's workshop.

It was not really so much a workshop as it was a laboratory- with brightly coloured potions stored in the shelves of jam jars that lined all the walls and mysterious plants and other magical substances hanging from hooks in the ceiling. In one corner stood a massive cauldron and wherever there was the slightest bit of space her mum had spellotaped up diagrams of interesting creatures. All in all the place had always seemed at least as welcome and comfortable to her as her own bedroom did… only today it was a bit different: the cauldron often bubbled away quietly to itself – occasionally teasing them with promising bangs or fizzles- but now it was obviously the source for all the steam which here was so thick that it nearly completely obscured her vision, as well as the strange oceanic smell which had replaced the rooms normal scent of sherbet.

"Come over here darling! You can't see properly where you are."

Her mother's voice loomed from a couple of feet away and Luna walked hesitantly towards it with her arms outstretched in front of her- finally locating her and taking the warm hand that was offered.

"look." She whispered- pointing with her free hand and Luna did and gasped.

Around them the steam still curled and rolled like water- only now she could also make out shadows moving within it too- no- more than shadows, although not quite solid… Luna squinted a little and managed to deduce that they were fish , or the ghosts of fish or…something, it didn't really matter what they were she supposed- only that the sight was breath-taking, similar to how it must feel to stand invisible on the floor of the ocean and look up. A faint but immediately distinguishable sound somewhere above their heads suddenly came to them and Luna had to stop herself from laughing in delight: whale song. Surely enough seconds later an enormous dark shape swooped low over their heads, moving absurdly gracefully for something so large and the mother and daughter both just turned to each other and grinned.

"What do you think you're going to use it for?" Luna had asked sometime later, when they were all in the kitchen hugging steaming mugs of the infusion of gurdyroots her dad had spent the last year perfecting.

Her mum stared dreamily into the distance for a while before replying

"Do you know darling I have no idea! I was trying to create a type of patronus in potion form but I got a little ditracted….it was pretty though wasn't it?"

Luna smiled

"Very …what do you think we should do now? To celebrate I mean?"

"Oh I don't know…." She suddenly gasped, flapping her hands again in that characteristic gesture "let's go and fish for plimpies! We haven't in such a long time"

Even at the age of nine, it was not in Luna's nature to get unreasonably excited, but even she thought this was a wonderful idea and so about an hour later they were all trooping towards the stream, laden with nets and fishing lines ; it was more fun the muggle way.

"Whenever you need to think" said her mum, catching up with her and drifting off into her world of sayings and motherly advice "it's always best to go where there's water- it'll wash all the fuzziness out of your head."

Luna smiled indulgently and linked her arm with her own, feeling vaguely happy.

"Smile!" said her dad from behind them, brandishing an ancient camera and weighed down with the bulk of the fishing gear and her mum promptly dumped her own armful of stuff to sweep Luna up in a big cuddle.

Two weeks later the same cauldron that had produced those strange fish, giving them so much joy and excitement, exploded when her mother was trying to recreate the trick. From her room Luna had heard the screams but , instinctively frozen with fear and the hope that they would resolve themselves into laughter as her mother fixed whatever minor mishap had occurred, did not run downstairs as she should have, instead leaving her father who had been working on his typewriter at the kitchen table to investigate. New screams – more terrible than the first because she'd never heard her dad even raise his voice – echoed through the house and upstairs Luna curled herself into a ball and tried desperately to wish herself away.

Dad was in Azkaban now. Harry had been furious at Kingsley for allowing it but security had become so tight it would have seemed wrong for the ministry to release someone who definitely had been in contact with the death eaters for a few months. Luna understood this, although it made her ache, but Harry _was _Harry after all. At least there were no longer any dementors there; she hated to think of her father made to re live her mother's death a thousand times.

She felt stiff after staying in the same position for so long in the cold ,so she twirled around a couple of times to warm herself up, still feeling rather pensive and melancholy although her eyes were now dry.

She listened to the soft rustling of grass and leaves and the splash of the rain hitting the stream not too far away.

"_Whenever you need to think, it's always best to go where there's water"_

Luna had thought about that so many times, trying to find some hidden meaning in it, some clue on what on earth to do with the hole in her heart – but of course there was none, her mother had never been mysterious or philosophical because she had been too busy laughing and inventing and living and Luna would never have had it any other way, she really had been an extraordinary witch.

Smiling to herself at this thought, she tucked the photograph away in the folds of her nightie and, turning away from the remains of her house, started walking in a way that she knew would take her back to the burrow, only via the stream. It really was a nice place to think.


End file.
